Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

Once you knew something better, my mother always said, it was hard to go backward in life because even if you’d once been happy with less, more—the knowledge of more—was always with you.

Once you knew something better, my mother always said, it was hard to go backward in life because even if you’d once been happy with less, more—the knowledge of more—was always with you.

The loss of a place isn’t really so different from the loss of a person. Both disappear without permission, leaving the self diminished, in need of testimony and evidence.

Generally she was happy or, failing that, reasonably content, though she sometimes wondered if she’d conceded the inevitable too quickly. What if the only thing concessions got you was the habit of conceding?

That playful, intimate tone is one Sarah hasn’t used since we were young, and even then she employed it only with Bobby, which means that in writing to him she became that girl again—sporting, flirtatious, her whole life before her. Who does she miss more, I wonder, the boy she once loved or the girl who loved him?

But the human heart, well, it inclines this way and that without permission, ever unruly, ever wayward.

It was what you got, he now understood, in lieu of a loved one.

The details of fights were as hard to recall as kisses,

I look over at Sarah and wonder how I’ll manage without her, absent her ability to see what’s there instead of what I prefer to see. I’ll have to make sense of things for myself. She’ll wake up soon and then be gone, so for a while I’ll watch her breathe and dream. So lovely. She’s wearing a cotton nightgown, modest and opaque, but of course it reveals what isn’t there, the breast she surrendered last year to save her life, and looking at her now, knowing the small secrets she’s kept in her good heart, I feel a little better about my own. Perhaps we are all entitled to keep a small place that’s our own.

The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we’re left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.

Maybe she didn’t know everything she’d say to her mother, but she’d at least let her know she finally understood how life worked, that one day you woke up and found yourself in the throes of what could only be despair, prey to doubts you imagined long banished, your self-confidence shredded.